Yes, you read that title correctly, reading is a gateway drug. While by no means does that make it a bad thing (on the contrary, actually), reading and drug use have a lot in common. While I certainly don’t condone the use of drugs (Disclaimer!), their production, distribution and use have a lot in common with that of books, more so than many realize or care to admit. Once we understand the supply-chain aspects of reading, then we can examine their gateway tendencies.
At the beginning of the supply chain are those who create the product. This occurs in the coca fields of Colombia, the opium fields of Afghanistan, a run-down shack in West Virginia pumping out meth or fentanyl. However, within the literary world, this is where the authors come into play; without the men and women applying fingertip to keyboard and pen-to-paper, the entire supply chain cannot exist. The relentless hunger of both the drug and the book markets demand that the metaphorical and literal fields keep growing and harvesting, then refining the product into the sought-after goodies. Due to the lack of standardization in the production of illegal drugs, the end-product can very well be different from one grower/cooker to the next. The same also holds true with authors; the words I use and topics I write about will inherently be different from that of other writers (side note; here are some of my preferred authors). In this regard, authors are similar to those who work the fields in far-off and lesser-developed nations.
Careful amounts of quality control go into the production of both books and drugs. While quality oversight in the field of narcotics can vary widely from one operation to the next, those who wish to consistently earn a profit must satisfy the user’s demand for good stuff .After all, one doesn’t get to Pablo’s net worth by supplying inferior products.The publishing field knows this as well, and hence the presence of editors. Editors act as a safety net to ensure that the product that is produced at the beginning of the supply chain is of sufficient quality. Without quality control, the market would be flooded with junk. The presence of quality-minded gatekeeping increases value to the end user, as I wrote about in my book.
After the product goes passes the muster of quality control, the product then arrives at a wholesale distributor. The wholesale distributors act as middlemen in the lengthy supply chain; they receive the product from quality control at cost (or close to it) and then sell disperse the inventory to the local dealers. In the drug world, images of El Chapo’s safehouses in the Arizona desert come to mind, while in the literary world this equates to libraries and bookstores. Libraries and bookstores play a vital role in the warehousing of books, especially as the publishing industry has progressed towards the print-on-demand model in an effort to reduce wasted inventory. Nowadays with books in electronic format, every e-reader with internet access essentially acts as a storage house in the arid Southwest, thus serving as a boon to distribution (and eventually, consumption). Eat your heart out, El Chapo!
From these safehouses, the product then goes to the friendly neighborhood dealers. These are the local representatives in your community whose sole function is to interact with the consumer and to move product (read: shove it down your throat, if necessary). There are various tactics these savvy businessmen use to sell inventory, chief among them is to addict the youth in their zip codes to product at a low cost (or in some cases, free); this is done in hopes of creating a lifelong user of the product. The sole aim of these dealers is to make sure that the product is widely accessible in every market and available around the clock. In the world of drugs, these dealers are exactly what I’ve just described; however in the world of books the dealers are none other than your teachers and (ideally) parents.
Thus, we are finally left to discuss the end-user. Provided that the efforts of the dealer were successful, the end-user of the product is left hopelessly hooked. Many use in the morning prior to starting their day, or it’s the last thing they do before retiring for the night. Many also make sure to keep an ample supply of their reality-escape of choice available at all times. As soon as their current stash is used, they have something new to crack into, thus ensuring the uninterrupted supply of product into their brains. The most ardent addicts are the ones who were hooked from a young age and have been strung along by the hands of skilled dealers ever since; the dealers may have come and gone yet the usage remains. Of course, there exists a spectrum of users; ranging from full-blown addicts to those who can just casually enjoy once in a while without getting hooked. Use of the end-product can be a solitary endeavor, though consumption can be a group activity too. This overall trend rings true for both drug users and avid readers.
Overlooking all of this activity is the financial overlord at the very top; a handful of cartels that vie for supremacy over the entire market, often squeezing out smaller operations in the process. After all, there are several billions of dollars up for grabs, so there is certainly an incentive to get the biggest slice of pie possible. While it’s easy to throw stones at the tycoons who fatten themselves on high profit margins, we must realize that these are simply businessmen who follow the incentives placed in front of them. Ultimately, they are not in control of what product winds up in our communities, we are. Those at the top will follow market trends, wherever it may take them. This bodes equally true for the CEO of PenguinHouse as much as it does for El Chapo and Pablo Escobar.
Reading is a gateway that leads those who engage in the activity to all sorts of rabbit-holes. For me personally, reading has been a gateway to professional growth. Others find a community in the form of a weekly book club, while others find that reading is a gateway to further knowledge (it absolutely is). Keeping with the narcotics analogy, I’ve acted as a grower, dealer and an end-user (an addicted one at that) in the literary supply-chain. I imagine after posting this article, I might be met with an intervention. One thing is for certain; I’m not going to rehab, that’s for damn sure.
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